Fareeda Ake: What does Define me

It was finally time; she delayed it long enough. Fareeda Ake stared right at the hole and its aroma stared right back.

Who would break first? She vowed to not use it, a hole in the ground wouldn’t defeat her, but it had been four days and her calls back to her parents had not yielded a functional toilet.

“I know it’s Nigeria, but my parents paid a lot of money for boarding school,” said Ake, her defiance, all the protests on the phone were all in vain, the hole had won.

After she stood shaken in front of her bathroom mirror, running her hand where flurries of hair used to be, she unpacked the little amount of makeup allowed onto a dresser sifting through looking for something, anything that would make her feel like a woman again.

**

Why do they look at me? She asked. Irises track her steps like homing launchers, they want to fire away Ake knows that – but she wonders why they find her at all interesting. “In my head,” she says, “I’m just wondering how the hell they all know each other on the first day of school.”

The assortment of faces made her uneasy, skin types, the waves of luscious hair dropping down from even the men – the homogeneity instilled in her rejected this new world, why wasn’t everyone bald?

It was less so the length of their hair, Ake didn’t like dealing with the coarse mess her 4b curls would become. Her envious eyes felt locked onto the texture of her middle school classmates, they would weave blonde strands into ponytails and then back into styles that would cover the length of their shoulders. The ease with which her white peers dealt with something Ake had had such trouble with was unfair.

She came to learn at a relatively early age that the unfairness didn’t stop there.

**

The sun seemingly didn’t move from its overhead spot in the sky, as though knowing Ake had a netball tournament out in the Nigerian diaspora it wanted to make it as painful as could be. This was the fifth sport her school made her do, there was no love for it, but she had athletic gifts and needed to do something with them.

“She was always like that,” Ake’s mum Bukola would say, “she grew faster than everyone, both physically and mentally so it was all about putting her in positions to make use of it.”

Yet, her school were yet to find something for Ake she enjoyed, something that drew her out from the reality of being thousands of miles away from her family and offered that brief moment of euphoria.

She was more skilled than everyone on that netball court, but her size dominance reserved her for the role of goalkeeper.

Ake hated how her physical features determined what role she would play and what position she’d get put in, where was her ability to choose?

She only spent a year at the Louisville Girls High School in Nigeria, and it was only towards the end that Ake found what she was looking for. Entrenched in water, swimming laps upon laps was where true joy was, and when her father told her they were now all moving to the States, she thought she had her sporting niche to take with.

**

With everyone putting their swimming caps over their hair, a humorous sense of normalcy overcame Ake. The first thing she begged her mother to do once they arrived in Houston was to take her to her new school's swimming trials, she looked more athletic than the girls there and her arms were much longer. She would stretch them out on the side of the pool as though to gloat, smitten with confidence it almost dripped off her and she hadn’t even touched the water yet.

“The first thing the coach asked us to do was a simple freestyle, 8 lengths of the pool, child’s play,” Ake said. “She shouted go and before I could properly submerge my head below water the seven other girls had already made it halfway.”

**

Ake scooted along the bleaches to find her seat next to her parents. Her father had given her $10 to run a supply run at the popcorn stand whilst they waited for her brother Teni’s game to start. She arrived at Kingwood High School in Houston in grade 9 and her brother two years her junior in grade 11.

Teni was slender, with a bronze frame of pure athleticism. When they both entered the predominantly white school Ake acknowledged the dichotomy of how they were received. Despite not playing an ounce of basketball in his life, here Teni was, starting for the school’s varsity team, fans calling his name in unison.

Echoes of admiration rang as his number was called, Ake’s parents hovering up and down on their seats sending reverberations of gleam through the bleachers.

Final whistles blew, 85-30, Teni finished with 0 points and 15 rebounds, what was a bouncing rafter now only occupied solemnly by the player's parents.

“You need more than height to play basketball,” Teni jokingly said. “I quickly left the team and I and Ake went searching for our next sport or rather our place in this school.”

Whilst Teni would quickly move off to college, Ake, who would be here for four years, would need to find her place amongst it all.

**

The food in America was vastly different to what Ake had known. The high-caloric burgers and fries that were becoming commonplace dinner food at home were not the greatest recipe for fitness. It was on the advice of Teni that she looked to start going to the gym on her school campus.

Her gravitation towards the upper body machines and dumbbell drew the eyes once again, at this point though they didn’t pierce through, she had built thick skin.

“I came to a realisation pretty early on that I’m just so different to them,” said Ake. “Like I’m so far removed from their circles, what does it matter what they think, why on earth would I care.”

Coming to the gym became a regular occurrence, and those eyes that stared became wonderers, and then eventually friends.

“Some of my best friends from high school are those bodybuilders I met in the gym; it’s just funny how it all works.”

Eventually, Ake became acquainted with some guys and girls on the wrestling team which they pushed and pulled her to join.

“She came home saying she wanted to join the wrestling team,” Bukola said, “I was completely against it, she had already gone through a difficult period acclimating to this world, she’s already one of the only black girls at this school, I didn’t want her to be labelled any more then she needed.”

**

The first and last altercation Ake had ever gotten into was with someone who looked like her. It what was her fourth week in school after moving from Nigeria, and she finally began to understand her Caucasian American friends and they began to understand her.

Of the little diversity her high school had it came as a surprise when she looked around to see the person tugging on her afro to be a black girl.

“I always thought why,” she said, “I couldn’t understand what she was gaining by trying to bully me, pulling on my hair, calling me nappy, what do you gain from making someone else unhappy.”

Ake couldn’t take it anymore; she turned and shouted all the stress away.

“I was never the physical type, so I just turned and let out all the emotions that were slowly fading away in one big go. I’m all the better for it, I think all my friends all understood who I am more clearly.”

**

On the wrestling mat, Ake felt at home. It was her senior year, and she’d brought home enough silverware to make her mother change her tune.

Yet, despite wrestling for four years she still couldn’t get over how uncomfortable the singlet felt on her body. It just wasn’t her; she would roll one way and the spandex would almost drag her to the other side of the mat, but she forced the thought aside, it was her last match in high school and she had to end on a win.

“For her to be a varsity athlete,” her father Taye said, “I was so proud, she has always been headstrong and I know coming from Nigeria to the US as a 14-year-old isn’t the best of circumstances, so what she accomplished in high school, I couldn’t be more proud.”

“It took her only a few months to get into the varsity team from when she started in freshman year. By the second year, I was driving her 30 minutes out of the city to train extra hours in an MMA gym with an Olympic-level coach.”

By senior year, everything made sense.

She had tapped into her idiosyncrasy, was now also on the speech and debate team and was in many social circles morning introductions would delay her entrance to class.

Most importantly, she had never felt so confident in herself.

“I think it had the reverse effect,” Ake said. “I completely threw myself into this hyper masculinised role that was being propagated about me that by eventually feeding off of it and only caring what I think I had never felt more feminine.”

She loved the way her body looked, and wrestling played a major part. Her eye for fashion as well as the confidence dripping from her made sure she was voted best dressed in her graduating class.

**

Ake’s record was almost perfect, 52 wins and 4 losses meant she was in the eyes of recruits, she was invited out one last time by colleges to get one last look, at her penultimate match.

There wasn’t much riding on the line, this wasn’t a hail Mary to get a scholarship, she was already primed and ready at the University of North Carolina for Ake’s academic excellence, but she loved the sport too much not have one last hurrah in an organised format.

The best in the state of Houston were present as she made it to the quarterfinals before losing – a decent send-off.

Though recruits came calling, she understood and cherished the importance of academics, and besides, in Chapel Hill, she was already not paying.

**

Before Ake was truly settled in her dorm, she had a mission. She had scoured the Goheels website looking for the contact details of the head coach of UNC wrestling.

The summer had been long enough, she yearned to wrestle again, it gave her a sense of place and its absence was sadly felt.

This wasn’t the plan, her senior year of high school was the epitome of everything she worked towards, and she didn’t want to have to start again. The focus was going to be academics, solely academics.

Yet, she kept emailing, kept calling the number of the coaches on the team hoping for a chance to walk on.

“I tried, I called and called,” said Ake, “when I finally got in contact, they said they’d keep the door open but I could tell that it was a highly unlikely possibility.

Just like any athlete, she had interwoven the sport with the fibres of her being.

**

Wrapped and secured in white, her attire marked her as a master. In the bottom basement of Woollen Gym, Ake was surrounded by eyes again, laser-focused. This time, however, her visage gleamed as she ran her students through the basics of Jiu-jitsu.

Pipes adorn the ceiling, the only sense of place you get is by the deaf tick of the wooden clock on the wall. Without it, you’d be lost here for hours, enveloped in the Brazilian martial arts.

This wasn’t wrestling nor the 38 square foot mat Ake called her second home.

“Eventually I gave up trying to walk on,” said Ake, “I ended up joining the club wrestling team my freshman year and it wasn’t as consistent as I wanted it to be and also was very male-dominated.”

This wasn’t a problem for Ake in high school but in college her sparring partners were three years her senior and almost double her size.

“There's such a gap in like practicality that it's like, I can't even really learn anything from this because they’re just that much bigger, I couldn’t benefit.”

She went searching and landed on the UNC Club Jiu Jitsu team as something to fill the chasm.

“Ake’s one of the best judokas we have here,” said Chris, a member recruited to the team by Ake in one of her roles as an officer.

“She’s 100% got the most medals at tournaments this year and just keeps getting better, I hope she keeps going after college and gets her black belt.”

**

“I like Jiu Jitsu,” Ake says, “but I’m not satisfied.”

Despite all the medals and progress over the past three years frustration has built up in Ake over the difference between the sports.

Wrestling was a rope that took her out of a hole, it allowed her to understand herself and her physical appearance.

It also needed more time to master, it takes 10+ years to become a black belt, Ake just didn’t have that much time.

“It feels like there’s this perpetual void that's me trying to fill what I had with wrestling,” said Ake.

Whilst she smiles away at practice, there rumbles a quiet admission that Jiu-Jitsu is just a placeholder.

**

It’s time to spar, Ake steps up to the mat brushing her braids to the side, and she bouts with a pupil to display the new move they’ve learnt this session.

Eyes of admiration stare, she shakes her limbs as though to show off, confidence dripping from her.

She may never wrestle again, but I don’t think there's a need to.

END